The founder of Neuralink recently announced that he has successfully implanted the first brain chip in a human. What consequences will this milestone have?
Billionaire technologist Elon Musk has taken another significant step in his ambitious vision of merging technology with biology . The influential entrepreneur recently announced that his company Neuralink has implanted its innovative brain-computer interface in a human for the first time.
According to the tycoon, the recipient of the implant “is recovering well” and initial results have shown a “promising detection of neuronal spikes”, an indicator of electrical activity in brain cells. But is this the first implantation of a chip in a human brain?
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This is ‘Telepathy’
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The company
founded by Musk in 2016, seeks to develop technologies that enable direct communication between the human brain and computing devices . Neuralink’s device, which has been dubbed Telepathy , consists of a chip and an array of more than 1,000 super-thin, flexible electrodes. These electrodes are inserted into the cerebral cortex by a high-precision surgical robot.
Once implanted
the electrodes are designed to record thoughts related to movement . Musk intends for these neural signals to be translated by an app to control a cursor on a screen or produce text. “Imagine Stephen Hawking being able to communicate faster than a typist or an auctioneer. That’s the goal,” Musk said.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had approved human clinical trials for Neuralink in May 2023. Last September, the company announced it was opening enrollment for its first study in people with quadriplegia.
An announcement that has not come as a surprise to neuroscientists.
Musk, the richest man in the world, “said he was going to do it,” says John Donoghue , an expert in brain-computer interfaces at Brown University . “He had done the groundwork, building on the shoulders of others, including what we did starting in the early 2000s.”
Neuralink’s original ambitions
which Musk outlined when he founded the company in 2016, included fusing human brains with artificial intelligence . Its more immediate goals appear to be in line with the neural keyboards and other devices that people with paralysis already use to operate computers.
But Neuralink’s methods and speed in pursuing those goals have resulted in federal investigations into dead study animals and the transportation of hazardous materials. And Musk has a habit of suggesting big things but providing few details, notes Ryan Merkley , director of research advocacy at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine .
“This is perhaps the biggest example of that”
because there is no information available about the person who received the implant or their medical condition, Merkley said. “Depending on the patient’s disease or disorder, success can look very different,” he said.
Elon Musk and his company Neuralink have been highly publicized for their advancement in brain-computer interface (BCI) technology. However, they are not the first entity to implant a chip in a human brain . There are precedents and previous developments in this field by other organizations and researchers.
One of the best
known programs in this field is BrainGate , developed by researchers at Brown University and other institutions. BrainGate has been implanting chips in human brains since the 2000s.
Their system uses an electrode array implanted in the motor cortex to allow people with paralysis to control external devices, such as computers and robotic arms, using their thoughts.
In 2004, a patient named Matthew Nagle was one of the first people to receive a BrainGate implant. He was able to use his thoughts to move a cursor on a computer screen and perform simple tasks, which was a significant advancement at the time.
What sets Neuralink apart from previous projects is its focus on improving existing technology and making it more accessible and functional. The company is building on previous research and development, improving the technology and expanding its potential applications, opening up new possibilities for the future of neurotechnology and medical applications.
A brief tour
The concept of brain implants is not new, however. One of the first demonstrations of direct mind control occurred on a hot summer day in 1963 in the province of Cordoba (Andalusia).
Spectators gathered to watch a man taunting an angry bull in a crimson red cape. As the bull raged toward the man, something extraordinary happened: the man pressed a button on a device he held in his left hand, and the bull suddenly lost interest, relaxed, and eventually walked away.
The spectators had just witnessed a demonstration by José Manuel Rodríguez Delgado , a neural engineer at Yale University in the US . The bull had a brain implant, an array of electrodes embedded in its caudate nucleus. When activated, the bull mitigated all feelings of aggression. That achievement marked a significant milestone in the fusion of mind and machine with brain implants.
The discovery of bioelectricity
But humans have long been aware of the electrical nature of living things. The electric eel , named by zoologist Carl Linnaeus in 1766, can produce a shock of 10 volts. In the 1770s, experiments showed that the “torpedo fish” delivered its shock of more than 200 volts by electrical means.
Italian physician Luigi Galvani was the first to provide evidence that all living things were, in some sense, ‘electric’. In 1780, while dissecting a dead frog, Galvani noticed that its leg twitched when touched with a metal scalpel carrying static electricity. He had discovered the basis of the human nervous system.
So if the brain operated using electricity, it should be possible to manipulate movements with electrical brain stimulation . German neuroscientists Edward Hitzig and Gustav Frisch achieved this in 1870 by stimulating a dog’s brain, producing predictable movements linked to different parts of the cerebral cortex.
American neurosurgeon Roberts Bartholomew would later exhibit this feat on humans. With patient Mary Rafferty ‘s consent , Bartholomew stimulated her exposed brain, causing movements in her limbs.
His experiments, although ethically dubious, provided definitive evidence that human brains could also be manipulated through electrical stimulation, laying the groundwork for neural implants.
Scared monkeys and remote-controlled bulls
Engineer José Manuel Rodríguez Delgado remains a controversial figure in the history of brain implants. His compact implantable systems, created in the late 1940s, were implanted in patients with epilepsy and schizophrenia . His experiments included a female macaque avoiding attack by an aggressive alpha male by activating electrodes in her brain and causing a calm woman to become enraged by stimulating her brain.
Advances in neural implants
Despite the controversy, neural implants have led to significant medical breakthroughs. The cochlear implant, created in 1961 by William House and John Doyle , allows deaf people to hear by stimulating the cochlear nerve. More than 200,000 people have benefited from this technology.
Implants have also been developed to restore sight, such as the Argus I retinal implant in 2002 , which allows blind people to perceive shapes. Likewise, engineers at the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland, have created a retinal implant that can render a legally blind person non-blind.
Deep brain stimulation and beyond
Deep brain stimulation ( DBS) treats Parkinson’s disease (PD) by electrically inhibiting the subthalamic nucleus, relieving symptoms. This technique has been expanded to treat epilepsy, chronic pain, depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder, with closed-loop systems providing precise stimulation.
Likewise, prosthetic limbs controlled by neural implants, such as those demonstrated by Brazilian scientist Miguel Nicolelis , show promise but still face challenges.
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The future of brain implants
Optogenetics, a technology that uses light to stimulate neurons, offers more precise brain stimulation. Invented by Ed Boyden , it could challenge traditional electrical methods.
Although currently used for medical purposes, brain implants could one day augment the capabilities of healthy humans. British engineer Kevin Warwick and artist Neil Harbisson have demonstrated early examples of human augmentation.
However, risks and technological limitations prevent widespread adoption. With growing commercial and medical interest, brain implants are set to become increasingly common, potentially transforming lives and redefining what it means to be human.
